There was a traveler in the backyard at dusk, someone who’d come and gone several times before, and so far I’d taken him for something else each time—a dainty ruined chapel, a green cathedral, the Atlantic breaking itself on rocks. Pretty pictures in springtime, nothing more. But here he was again. He had many hands up his sleeves and in each one a question like a fireball in heraldry, catching violet fire and meant to open walls. Did I have to listen? I’d seen him die! He’d be thatch on a hovel when the hot wind came. But where did he go, that each time he came back he was more? Where was he when he wasn’t? There was something bedded in the ground that stayed though he went, that though he came back changed stayed the same—who was that asleep down there? If I’d seen his body destroyed again and again, who was this who was him now? The questions, finding no husbands and not wanting to die unmarried, opened holes in the wall and went out in search, and being my questions I went after them, and so began my travels.

Lavender is a house which is its own occupant. Other houses are one way on the outside and another within. Lavender’s house is lavender all the way through. We enter houses as breath enters our bodies and conclude from this that houses and bodies are expendable, can be come to and gone from and we be out and about. Lavender didn’t enter itself but grew there. More to the point, its color occurs between gorgeous and invisible, aluminum and cologne, and its scent though not far-traveling is sweet and astringent and pierces iron. Its gift is to cleanse, as a body is cleansed and prepared for its long stationary journey. Lavender doesn’t live forever and isn’t aware of any riddle, but lives and while it does, does so eternally. It’s not averse to people. Its sympathies can be engaged though not by logic or displays of excellence. But if asked it will show us that it’s our body laying breathless on the bed, and how to sweeten the soles of its feet, and remove the oil of sadness and terror from its hair.